Abstract
The decision having been made by the U.S. Congress to establish a decimal system of currency as the official national currency of the United States of America, one might have expected a decimal system of weights and measures to follow quickly. But that was not to be. Between 1784 and 1789 Thomas Jefferson was in France and therefore his role as principal catalyst for decisions on decimalization was muted. The chapter begins by placing the weights and measures decision in the context of economic and political forces operating within the new nation. From a lag-time theoretical perspective, although there were numerous available arithmetic textbooks which dealt with decimal fractions, the prevailing economic and political pressures negated any educational and mathematical pressures for more widespread applications of decimals. Thus, a curious result occurred—the United States decimalized its currency, but not its weights and measures.
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Clements, M.A.(., Ellerton, N.F. (2015). Weights and Measures in Teacher-Implemented Arithmetic Curricula in Eighteenth-Century North American Schools. In: Thomas Jefferson and his Decimals 1775–1810: Neglected Years in the History of U.S. School Mathematics. Springer, Cham. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-319-02505-6_4
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